Tracking Progress towards the International Safeguards for Children in Sport

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The study has a relevant importance for giving visibility to strategies to protect against violence experienced by children and young people in the practice of sports.

ABSTRACT

It is well structured and written in a concise and easy-to-read form, highlighting the main points of the article.

BACKGROUND

It presents the study problem in a concise and well-structured manner, placing the significance of the study based on relevant and updated literature and defining the objectives of the study.

METHODS

They were described in a detailed and clear way. It strikes me that approximately 400 organizations globally use Safeguards and only 50 participated in the study. Could the losses have been mitigated to give more consistency to the study? Would it be possible to describe in more detail what was done to reduce these losses?

RESULTS

The results need some adjustments:

1.     It would be important that tables 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7 not only contain percentages, but also absolute numbers.

2.     I suggest that the authors describe the results contained in the table before presenting it. It is strange to put what the table presents only in its footer. For example, after topic 3.2.1, table 4 is placed without any reference to what it presents and, in its footer, it is written what should have been in the text before it was presented.

3.     Some acronyms are placed without their description, which makes it difficult for readers to understand: CEO (page 11), NGOs (page 12) and NGBs (pages 10 and 14).

DISCUSSION

The authors cite the tables, which is not part of the discussion. I suggest removing all the sentences that refer to the tables, because they are results and not discussion.

The authors discuss the advantages and limitations of the study.

REFERENCES

The references are well organized and updated. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for this paper which is an important and continuing investigation into how safeguarding is both viewed and engaged in across the world. The work shows the continuing strength of the International Safeguards and shows an international picture of how this is implemented. The data is clearly presented and argued effectively. While the numbers of submissions appeared relatively low (50), and the limitation because of the use of English as the language for the survey (which does in hindsight seem a substantial flaw) the data provided does give encouraging insight into the use of the Safeguards and what still needs to be completed. 

I would accept the work for publication with the few very minor suggestions below:

Lines 377-379. Can you please check the following sentence to ensure this is what you mean as it implies that safeguarding WAS TO BE PREVENTED NOT ABUSE "Informing and coordinating describes how through the Safeguards organisations are becoming more knowledgeable about what safeguarding is and how it can be prevented and how organisations are working together to prevent future cases and build a safer system"

Lines 468-469 - checking spelling “reporting lines have no yet been promoted as much as we are still in the process of finalizing policy and procedures”

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for taking the time to review our paper. I can confirm that your suggestions have been actioned and were very useful and you can see the responses below.

Point 1: Lines 377-379. Can you please check the following sentence to ensure this is what you mean as it implies that safeguarding WAS TO BE PREVENTED NOT ABUSE "Informing and coordinating describes how through the Safeguards organisations are becoming more knowledgeable about what safeguarding is and how it can be prevented and how organisations are working together to prevent future cases and build a safer system"

Response to point 1: It now reads "Informing and coordinating describes how through the Safeguards organisations are becoming more knowledgeable about what constitutes abuse, how it can be prevented and how organisations are working together to prevent future cases and build a safer system"

Point 2: Lines 468-469 - checking spelling “reporting lines have no yet been promoted as much as we are still in the process of finalizing policy and procedures”

Response to point 2: It has now been changed to "not yet been promoted"